Creative Zen Vision 30GB vs. Consus PMC-300 20GB
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Creative Zen Vision
Transferring Files
You can use Creative's MediaSource, the Zen Vision Media Explorer, or Windows Media Player 10 to transfer files to the Zen Vision. My choice is the "Import Media" option using the Media Explorer.
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Browse to the folder containing music or videos, and click "Add" or "Add Folder". What's interesting with the Zen Vision is that using "Add Folder" will create a folder on the Zen Vision as well.
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Here, you can edit the ID3 tags if necessary.
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Finally, the transfer process.
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Creative included a video converter, which allows you to convert your videos into Windows Media format and transfer it to the Zen Vision. The software is easy enough to use.
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Click "Add..." to add video files to convert.
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You can then set the video quality. However, I found the presets available to be lacking. The best quality video was only at a resolution of 320x240, which would not show the full potential of the Zen Vision's 640x480 screen.
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Conversion is very, very slow. It is almost the same time as the length of the video file. The reason for this is that the converter essentially "plays" the video using the available DirectShow filters, then saves it in Windows Media format. So, for example, if you use ffdshow to decode MPEG files, any effects you have (for example, post-processing, colour controls) would be applied to the converted file as well. This is as opposed to "normal" file conversion which use "Video For Windows" (VFW) codecs.
I'm guessing that Creative used this method for compatibility reasons, since not everyone has the necessary VFW codecs installed, but they definitely have the DirectShow filter since without it, they cannot watch it on the computer in the first place.
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Consus PMC-300
Transferring Files
Transferring files to the PMC-300 is very easy. In Windows, when you connect the player to the computer via the USB cable, Windows creates a new drive letter for the PMC-300. Double-click on that, and there are several folders. These folders are special folders to enable the PMC-300 to recognise the file types. So to transfer music, you would put them in the "music" folder, and videos in the "video" folder. You can create additional folders of your own, and put media files there. You can then use the PMC-300's "Browser" mode to play those files.
Remarks
The PMC-300 wins in terms of convenience. However, the Zen Vision's software may appeal more to the novice user, with the step-by-step instructions. Also, the software will prevent incompatible video files to be transferred, saving the hassle of transferring a video, only to find the player is unable to play it. On the other hand, the initial "Zen Vision Media Explorer" screen offers so many different options, it can get overwhelming. This is due to Creative offering more than one way to do something. I mentioned this before in my earlier reviews. Creative should really work on unifying the software interface.
It should also be noted that the PMC-300 seems to have problems recognising Chinese text. It failed to recognise my set of MP3s which contained a mix of Big5, GB and Unicode encoding, displaying gibberish instead. For the Zen Vision, this time around, the "Import Media" accepts MP3s with Unicode tags. In previous players, only the "Organise Music" method worked to transfer Chinese (or other Asian language) tracks. If you need to convert Big5/GB encoded tags to Unicode, you can try using Convertz.
Transfer Speeds
I chose 201MB of MP3s to transfer. You can see that Creative has improved the transfer speeds, and it is almost matching the iPod's. The PMC-300 was the fastest, transferring the files in a mere 13 seconds, resulting in a write speed of approximately 15.5MB/s, more than double the Zen Vision and iPod.
| Device | MB Transferred/Time taken | Average write speed |
| Zen Vision 30GB | 201MB/31secs | ~6.5MB/s |
| PMC-300 20GB | 201MB/13secs | ~15.5MB/s |
| Zen 20GB (Media Explorer) | 176MB/32secs | ~5.5MB/s |
| iPod 4G 40GB | 140MB/21secs | ~6.7MB/s |
For video, I chose a 700MB video file. The PMC-300 shows an impressive write speed of about 19.4MB/s!
| Device | MB Transferred/Time taken | Average write speed |
| Zen Vision 30GB | 700MB/90secs | ~7.8MB/s |
| PMC-300 20GB | 700MB/36secs | ~19.4MB/s |
Below is the data presented in a graphical format.
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Benchmarks
The following graph shows the result of the benchmarks done using SimpliSoftware's HD Tach.
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The Zen Vision allows for a maximum partition of 16GB to be used as a removable drive. You will notice that it exhibits the same constant read/write speeds as the Zen 20GB. The PMC-300, on the other hand, shows a normal depreciative graph, typical of hard disks. Notice also that the PMC-300 has more than double the average read speed of the Zen Vision.